When a Jedi Was Perfectly Correct Using Force Lightning
Being a Jedi is one of the most powerful thoughts star Wars games can give-the power of a lightsaber, the greatest power of the Force itself. Indeed, it is a dream to which we must turn more than any other star Wars‘ a long history of play. But with that thought has come the idea of the Force, over the years, often left out of the narrative. star Wars itself: the idea of a force field as a separate force, enclosed in light and dark, unified and unified because, well, that it works in a video game. It works a little better in a spiritual and narrative sense, which is why you sometimes get a wild example of a Jedi that’s pretty cool with lightning bolts out of their fingers and people shaking… as long as it has a different name.
I’ve been thinking about this lately because, last week, it was announced as a classic hack-and-slash. The Phantom Menace the game Jedi Power Battles is getting a new updated release early next year, 25 years after the first Universal Extended Edition to introduce the “Light Side version” of Force Lightning. In Power Wars-was created from the perspective of the Jedi Order in an earlier era that had not yet been fully clarified by arrival The Phantom Menace on the big screen—“Electric Judgment” was a skill used exclusively by Jedi Master Plo Koon. For all intents and purposes, it was a Force Lightning But Good: Plo shot golden electrical energy from his hands, which he used to incapacitate many of the droid enemies you faced down in the game’s various levels.
It marked the first time we had clearly seen a Jedi use the force, until now, we had only seen Emperor Palpatine use it to torture Luke in time. Return of the Jedi. But since then, the Expanded Universe has been finding ways to use it, and allowing for the destructive use of the Force as something that is consistent with what would become more and more integrated over the years as the moral ideology of the Jedi Order. In some interpretations, the ability was treated as a forbidden path among several generations of Jedi, fearing that its root in the desire to harm, by killing or otherwise, was part of the darkness. The electric decision will be specially refined as a skill started by Plo Koon himself: a reference book Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force includes a description of the mission where the Jedi Master unknowingly shoots lightning from his hands to avoid a villain during a hostage situation. After reporting the explosion to the Jedi Council and reflecting on his feelings, telling them that he had no bad feelings when the ability occurred, and expressed no desire to kill a criminal in the process, Plo was given permission to develop and use it. skill and record his knowledge of it for Order.
In the latest EU news, Electric Judgment will allow Emerald Lightning, a standard version of the ability, despite the name, which can be seen in many different colors (except the blue-white of Force Lightning, of course). With it and its increasing use in the era of the New Jedi Order of EU objects came many applications, usually offensive ones like those associated with Electric Judgment, but also defensive applications, like storm shields, or a very impressive tool. But for the most part, it remained the same: the power was very similar to that used by the dark foils of the Jedi, but it only came from being used with the good intentions of justice, rather than anger and hatred.
Was that enough to justify the traditional “Sith” powers being used in the name of good? Well, it depends. The gamification of the Force as a toolkit brought us to Electric Judgment and is what gives us this unified vision of the Force “abilities” that can be described as light and dark, too. What’s so natural about controlling someone else’s mind that you feel, even if it’s just for a moment with a Jedi mind trick? What’s so clearly aggressive and violent about using lightning to incapacitate an enemy by pushing them with enough kinetic energy to send them flying to the ground? Is telekinesis “dark” because it has an offensive appeal, even though we see Jedi use it all the time?
The Force as we really see it in the movies, especially in the original trilogy,—and generally should be seen as a force—is a force that shows intent and nuance of context. There isn’t a clear sense of any single action where the Power has a dark- or light-side code, and that you can cross off like choosing a different skill tree in a video game. It’s about the feelings the user feels when they enter the force, how they use it and use it—being light or dark is about how the user uses this common power, rather than the properties of the power itself. naturally or. This broader understanding of the Force, beyond the dichotomy of what we can understand as Jedi and Sith throughout the setting of those groups in the EU and the era of the prequels, has resurfaced again in the present. star Warswhich is a franchise that is very willing to question what it means to use the Force, and to use the words “Jedi” and “Sith” in the first place, and to further question the motives of these groups in things like Ahsoka or The Acolyte.
Perhaps with the resumption of that idea, we can see a little of the gamified idea star Wars‘the backbone of the spirit. A force greater and wider than any two schools of thought can ever truly combine—it binds all living things, no matter how sensitive they are to them. As the franchise ponders its future—uncertain or otherwise as it currently stands, one that at least for now aims to consider what it would mean for the hero to attempt to rebuild the Jedi Order a third time on screen—perhaps we do. we need a reminder of the strange place of the Electrical Judgment in the stars, and make us change our view of the Force as it did at that first time, about 25 years ago.
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